


Letting Go

by ShadowCas



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Episode: s12e23 All Along the Watchtower, Fix-It, Grieving Dean, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Episode: s12e23 All Along the Watchtower, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 19:06:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10950840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowCas/pseuds/ShadowCas
Summary: Cas is dead, and Dean is broken.Fix-it fic (kinda) for the Supernatural S12 finale. Less pain, less cliffhangers for the weak of heart (like me).





	Letting Go

     Cas is dead.

     Dean sinks to his knees, the thought hitting him harder than all the punches he’s taken in the past few hours. For one moment, the impossible had come true; Cas had made it out of the alternate universe in time. And just as quickly, he had been taken away again, this time, permanently.

     He is vaguely aware of the fact he is alone. Sam had left his side and gone back towards the house, leaving him to kneel in the dirt beside Cas’s body. What he had left for, Dean isn’t sure of, and he is too broken to care. As far as he’s concerned, the world stopped moving as soon as Cas hit the ground.

     He tries not to look at the body. It is too stiff, too real, and too absent of the angel that was meant to inhabit it. He looks away but feels its presence at his side, a strangely comforting weight on his heart that will eventually crush him as time goes on.

     He looks up to the sky and prays. _God? Amara? Anyone?_ He tries to say the words out loud, but they are blocked by the pulsing pain in his throat. He feels his lips tremble with unspoken words. _Please. Fix him, please. Just one more time. I can’t—_

     No one is listening. God and Amara have left the Earth for good. They abandoned him with a brother he had to protect, a mother who cared too late, and an angel that he couldn’t convince to stay.

     He can’t keep his eyes away any longer. Slowly he lowers his head, falling back on his heels, and he looks at Cas’s lifeless body.

     Cas’s wings are burned on the ground. They don’t look like the magnificent shadows that Dean had seen last. The charred marks are mangled, broken. For a second, he has the illogical thought, _We gotta fix Cas’s wings. That’s gotta hurt like a bitch,_ before the terrifying reality washes over him again. Something shudders deep and raw in his chest.

     Cas looks too peaceful, like he’s sleeping, but Dean knows that angels don’t sleep. Still, he can’t reconcile the fact that Cas is dead with the image he sees in front of him. He always thought that if Cas were to die, he would be bruised and bloody, going down with a fight. Not a clean stab through the back with an angel blade. _Dean_ was supposed to have his back. Now Cas is another member of his family that he failed to protect.

     Before Dean can stop himself, his hands cup the sides of Cas’s face, because it can’t end like this, not really. His skin is not warm, and not cold. It doesn’t feel human. “Cas?” he breathes, one thumb stroking the other man’s cheek. “Cas,” he says, and his voice breaks. His hands slide down to Cas’s shoulders, and he jostles him. “Cas, come on, you gotta wake up. I – I can’t. You gotta come back, man.”

     Cas’s head lolls to the side. He doesn’t stir.

     He releases Cas’s shoulders, and his hands come to rest on his chest. There is something solid on Cas’s left side, and Dean fumbles around inside his coat until he pulls a square piece of plastic from the breast pocket of Cas’s shirt.

     _Dean’s Top 13 Zepp Tra xx,_ it reads. “Dammit, Cas,” Dean says, lip trembling with every cursed breath he takes.

     Dean barely has the chance to put the tape into his own pocket before the sound of glass shattering permeates the silence. He jumps to his feet, panicked. His mom is gone, his – Cas is gone. He can’t lose Sam, too.

     Dean sprints into the house, and bolts up the stairs, taking two at a time. He bursts into the room, looking around wildly. The window has been smashed open. And Sam? He finds Sam in the corner, dazed, but alive.

     “Sam!” He helps his younger brother to his feet. Sam groans, one hand pressed to his head where a lump is certainly forming. A thin trickle of blood slides down his forehead, but nothing too serious. After breathing in a sigh of relief, Dean asks, “What happened? Where’s the kid?”

     Sam shakes his head, eyebrows raising for a moment. “Not a kid,” he says. “I don’t know how, but he’s already fully grown.”

     “What?”

     “I dunno. But he got the jump on me and then burst out the window.” He winces, rubbing his head once more, but starts towards the door. “Come on, let’s see if we can find him outside.”

     They return to the yard together, but there is no sign of the nephilim. With a jolt, Dean realizes there is no sign of Cas either.

     “No. No!” He runs forward to the spot where Cas’s body is supposed to be. The charred ruins of his wings are still there, along with a splatter of his blood, dark and muddy in the dirt. “Cas!” he calls, turning around. There’s nothing there. It’s just him and Sam and the heaviness of loss settling between them.

     “No,” Dean says again, and sinks to his knees.

     “Dean,” Sam murmurs, and he knows it’s the voice Sam uses when he’s afraid of Dean breaking. In some ways, it makes it worse. “It wasn’t Cas anymore. Just his vessel.”

     “Sam.” He shakes his head. “I – I just can’t. I didn’t – I should’ve–”

     But he should’ve what? Said goodbye? Told Cas what he really meant to him? Not to Cas, but to Cas’s body?

     What difference would that have made? When it came down to it, Dean was a coward. The fact is that he should’ve told Cas what he meant to him long ago, at the very first chance he had. He shouldn’t have waited for a close call, and then a closer call than the last. He pushed it off so long that it was too late.

     “Dean.” Sam is pulling him to his feet. “We have to go. We don’t know where the nephilim is, and we’re out in the open.”

     “Yeah. Yeah, of course.” They move towards the Impala, and Dean can barely register his legs working under him. He struggles to breathe.

     Cas’s truck is parked nearby. It sends another wave of grief over him, stopping him in his tracks.

     “Dean?” Dean fumbles in his pocket for his keys, and presses them into Sam’s hand. “What are you doing?”

     “Cas’s truck. We... we can’t leave it.” He doesn’t know how to explain it to Sam that this is the last piece of Cas he has left, and that he can’t let it go.

     Thankfully, Sam doesn’t press further. “Yeah, okay. Just – be careful driving.”

     “Uh huh.”

     Dean is numb on the drive back. He wants so badly to sob and scream and curse every living thing, and it’s so much at once that he can’t even shed a tear. It’s all held back, beating painfully in his chest to the rhythm of his heart. For a moment, he considers popping in the tape he made for Cas, just so he has something to listen to other than flood of horrible truths running through his mind. He thinks of the songs he chose and what they meant, and he decides it’s for the best that he rides in silence.

     Cas’s stolen truck goes in the garage, just like the Impala. It is strange to have it there, surrounded by shiny classic cars and bikes, but it doesn’t belong anywhere else. He isn’t going to put the last of Cas’s possessions out in the driveway. It isn’t right.

     Two pairs of boots trudge heavily up the stairs, carrying exhaustion and heartbreak. He can feel Sam’s silence at his back. He knows that his brother wants to talk to him, and is holding back, knowing that Dean isn’t ready. He may never be ready.

     He climbs the last few steps quicker than Sam, ready to collapse into bed and hopefully sleep away the coming day so he doesn’t have to face the reality of a world without Cas. He’s kicking his shoes off as soon as he opens the door to his room, and as he approaches the bed, he finally looks up and freezes.

     Someone is there, hiding under the covers.

     He ducks back into the hallway. “Sam,” he hisses.

     “What?” Sam says, and Dean frantically shushes him, and gestures towards the door. He pulls out his gun, and Sam does the same. They creep quietly into Dean’s room.

     Sam stays by the door, gun ready, as Dean tiptoes towards the bed. He looks back at Sam, hand hovering above the covers. At Sam’s nod, he yanks the covers back.

     It’s Cas.

     Dean barely has the sense to put the safety back on before the gun falls from his hands. “Cas?” he croaks. The angel is curled up on his side, facing away from Dean. For a second he wonders if his eyes are playing tricks on him, but he looks over his shoulder to find Sam equally shocked.

     _Please be alive, please be alive, please be alive_. “Cas, that you?” He turns him onto his back and shakes him gently by the shoulders. “Come on, wake up,” he mutters.

     Cas’s eyelids flutter open, and a big gust of air fills Dean’s lungs.

     Cas sits up in a flash, looking frantically around him. “Dean,” he says, eyes focusing on the hunter. He glances at Sam behind him. “Where – What happened? I don’t understand. How did I get here?”

     “Cas.” He leaps onto the bed, practically tackling Cas with his hug. “You’re alive.” Cas is solid, and warm, and wonderfully _living._

     “Dean?” the angel asks, arms limp at his sides for a moment as Dean’s arms wrap around his shoulders. After a few seconds, shaky hands find their way to Dean’s shoulder blades, and he is held firmly to Cas’s chest.

     “You died, Cas,” Dean rasps, his voice totally wrecked. “I don’t know how, but you’re here. You’re home.” He draws back and cups the side of Cas’s face, suddenly realizing that the tears he’s been holding back for hours are now running down his own cheeks. Cas’s eyes are damp, too, as they stare at Dean in wonder.

     “The nephilim... he escaped,” Sam says. “And right after that, you – your body disappeared. Do you think maybe he was the one to bring you back?”

     “It’s possible,” Cas says, eyes still locked on Dean’s. “I don’t know.”

     “Are you... really you?” Dean asks in a broken whisper.

     “Yes.”

     As Dean looks back into his eyes, all he can see is _Cas_ and he knows it must be true. “Thank God,” he breathes, pulling Cas into another hug. “Thank God.”

     Sam is silent until they separate once more, though Dean’s arm remains slung over Cas’s shoulder. “We’ve lost so much today, I’m willing to take this as a win,” Sam says. “We can try to figure out what happened tomorrow, but for now, I’m just glad you’re back, man.” He claps Cas on the shoulder and then heads towards the door. “I’m beat. See you guys in the morning.”

     Cas and Dean sit in silence for a few seconds after he leaves. “You must be tired,” the angel says. “I should go to my own room now.” He slips out from Dean’s arm, leaving it cold, and stands from the bed.

     _C’mon dude, pull it together,_ Dean tells himself. _There’s never gonna be a perfect time to say it_. Not to mention that he shouldn’t take this second chance for granted.

     “Cas, wait.” The angel pauses and turns back towards Dean. The hunter clears his throat. “You should – you should stay.” Cas squints slightly. “I... I _want_ you to stay. Please.”

     Cas blinks slowly, at him, rooted in his spot. Dean waits on bated breath.

     “Okay,” he says. He comes back to the edge of the bed, hesitating only a fraction of a second before kicking off his shoes and climbing back in. His eyes flutter closed, unshed tears clinging to his lashes. “I’ll stay.”

     Dean is all out of words, but apparently it’s enough. Cas slides comfortably under his arm, and they lean back onto the pillows together. Cas’s head falls to Dean’s chest, and he places a kiss in the angel’s hair.

     He holds Cas tight and plans on never letting go.


End file.
